Another Damn Week

By Kenneth Lett

Every week for a year, author Kenneth Lett wrote a short story. Transcending genre, this small slice of his prolific mind ranges from the sublime to the silly, bound together by the most profound of questions: What does it mean to be human?

Exploring the human mind from within and without, these stories visit the aftermath of teaching our toys to think, the pitfalls of understanding the human brain too well, and the folly of programmable mirrors. Love, science, art and vending machines commingle in this surprising collection.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kenneth Lett
• Release date: Jan 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311194688

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Another Damn Week

Stories From the 52 Project

Kenneth Lett

Copyright  2014 Kenneth Lett

All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition

Preface

In April of 2009, I convinced myself that it would be a good idea to write a short story every week for a year. There were rules: Each story had to be written entirely within that week, I couldn't write ahead of time. Each one had to be a real story, not just any old text. Every story, no matter how good or bad, would be posted on my blog for everyone to see. I called it the 52 Project.

It took three attempts to make it through a full year. At the end of it, I had a total of one hundred and seven short stories. This collection is a small selection on a particular theme taken from all three attempts: there are five stories from the first attempt, one from the second, and eleven from the last. I hope you like them.

Object Permanence

The truth is, very few things really need to exist. Not that there aren't an awful lot of things existing at any particular moment, mind you, it's just that not as many of them as you would think really, really need to exist. Only the things you or some other sentient being is interacting with at the moment actually have any sort of reality.

That pen on your desk? Not one of a million identical mass-produced writing utensils — in truth, it is one of only a few hundred, and when you turn off the light and walk out of the room, that pen isn't there anymore. It is on someone else's desk, or in their pocket, or hand. It's gone to where someone is paying attention to whether it is there or not, and no more pens than necessary to satisfy that attention ever really exist. They circulate, you see, to conserve the precious property of existence, lest we spread the stuff too thin over far too many items.

What about the factory where that pen is made, you ask? Are there not millions of pens rolling off the line all the time? Indeed there are, but here's the trick: the pens rolling into boxes under the watchful eye of the Quality Assurance Technician are the same pens that rolled off that line yesterday, which are the same as the pens that rolled off the day before. The pens in the boxes, once sealed away from human vision, are no longer in the boxes. They are back on the factory line, being assembled and inspected. Some of them are out in the world, of course, being pulled out of boxes and put on store shelves, or being used to write a password on a sticky note in an office somewhere — but most of them, most of them just aren't anywhere at all.

It's not just little things. You probably already guessed about the pens, because every now and then one will disappear from your desk and never make it back. Even though it was right there yesterday and no one has been in your office other than you, and you are sure you didn't touch it. Or individual socks, perhaps, or the little hex wrenches that come with flat-pack furniture. We all know, instinctively, that these things are ephemeral, try as we might to rationalize their disappearance with stories of forgetfulness, the sticky fingers of children, the voracious nature of the couch cushions; we know, deep down, that they don't really exist when we aren't looking. What is more surprising is that the big things, too, are parsimonious with their reality.

The ocean is an excellent case in point. The surface, largely, exists — but under that shiny facade, there isn't much need for trillions of cubic meters of salty water. Where divers dive and submariners creep, the water is there for them, but the ocean is a big, big place.

What about the fish? Or, for that matter, the birds who nest in the high branches of trees that make no sound when they fall in the forest, trees that don't exist at all when no one is there to hear? Do you think the animals are any different? Oh, certainly; from their perspective, they live out their lives in the sea or the forest, or under a rock, but there is no real need of them to actually waste rare solidity on the enterprise. Do not the eyes of the woodland creature make real the woodland around it? Well, yes, when the creature itself is real. When someone is watching it.

What of the peaks and troughs of demand for any particular thing? What happens, for example, when during the business day, a billion pens on a billion desks must be available for a signature or a quick note, a billion pens today when the Sunday before the universe needed only a few hundred? This is where things get interesting. For, you see, there is a cache. A well, a reservoir of things — a place for things that aren't, to not be.

Where exactly it is, well, that is hard to say. Everywhere; nowhere. It doesn't exist, of course, because existing would defeat its very purpose — yet it is there, it must be, to serve that purpose. It is a wondrous place, if place it can be called. A volume without volume, a potential of objects on every scale. It contains stars, and planets, and oceans and pens. A great many pens.

It's not a bad place to live, if I do say so myself. Yes, now you see how it is that I know so much about the secret nature of these things. Had you guessed already? Indeed, I live here, on an Earth made of every part of the Earth to which no one is paying any attention. I have all that I need here, and usually more. It is all subject to fading out before my eyes to appear in front of yours, of course. Sometimes I grab a pen and refuse to let it go. Sometimes I exert my own attention, and in your world a whole building appears to have gone missing — but to be honest, I don't play this sort of game often. I try not to be a bother to anyone, though the socks I wear, I am sure, are a frustrating loss to someone.

You may wonder how it is that I came to be here. Simple enough, really, I have never been someone to whom anyone paid much attention. One day, alone, holding a pen in silent contemplation, I opened my eyes and realized that I was no longer in the world I had known. The pen and I both had slipped away, and it didn't take a lot of time observing this place and its motley collection of disregarded objects to put two and two together. I just became aware of something we all know subconsciously.

You may wonder if it gets lonely here, all alone. Yes, and no. Perhaps no more lonely than the world from which I came. Surrounded by the unreal, or unreal to those who surround me, it's much the same. The truth is, many people come here — you think you are any different from the pen, the ocean water, the fish? Unobserved, all existence is thin, conditional. I'm just the one who was fool enough to open his eyes and see.

Machines in the Night

Order is important, young man, George explained as he filled another rack in the machine with small cellophane-enveloped fruit pies. See, this one has a broken corner, and this one is a bit poorly around the middle region. Those go in the back, see. Reason being, 'cause if there are only one or two pies left, and you really want a pie, you'll go ahead and take a damaged one. Up front, they give the impression that all the product is foxed, it taints the whole machine, psychologically, if you see what I mean. When the machine is near empty, though, people accept the damaged product more, figure the last ones are always the worst anyway.

George narrated slowly, and more or less continuously, throughout our work — it seemed to be a fundamental feature of being George. I let the ‘young man’ bit pass because (a) I'd pointed out my essential female nature to him three times already today, to no obvious effect; (b) the man talked in paragraphs and pages, so getting a word in would be an exercise in patience and probably wouldn't happen until so far along he wouldn't remember having called me a young man to being with; and (c) it wasn't clear that the distinction really registered with him in any case. Apprentice vending machine technicians were ‘young men’, ‘lads’, or ‘fellows’, possibly regardless of gender. He may have been confused at my attempts to bring gender into the discussion at all.

Now you see this rail, with the Cherry Surprise Puff, see how there's still two thirds of a rail left? Not popular, the Cherry Surprise Puff, but we can engineer things a bit. See, we'll neglect to top off the rail this round, it'll stand out among all the full ones, give the impression of scarcity, you see. Psychology, it's all down to psychology. Pity about the Surprise, though; they really let themselves down there, I think. Now, here we come to the Peanut Butter Delight. I handed him a narrow box of sweets, designed to be opened on one end so that the durable little cookies could slide out into the rail already oriented correctly, thus enhancing speed and efficiency of loading. It said so on the box.

George pulled the entire top of the box off and looked critically at the product. They love their peanut butter in these parts. Popular cookie, I keep tellin' 'em to do two rails, but they don't take advice from the likes of us, men who know the ground truth. He rearranged the cookies in no obvious pattern, and began sliding them into the rail two at a time. Now, you did training with old Bart, right? Very into his chocolate, as I recall. I flashed back to endless lectures on temperature control that devolved quickly into hair–raising tales of maintaining Israeli candy bar machines. Thing is, lad, you can't specialize so much in this business, you have to be a Jack of all vendables. You got to know how it all works, not just the few things you like best.

He closed up the machine and we headed back to the van with empty boxes, a heavy coin box, and a few not–fit–for–vending blueberry muffins. The next machine was sodas; the next, candy. The night wore on one machine at a time, me carrying boxes of product, unlocking the machines and priming the rails, George narrating.

You're a smart lad, Mary, I can tell, you pick things up. Calling me both Mary and a lad seemed to cause no cognitive dissonance for him whatsoever. I was glad my ability to open doors, carry boxes, and listen to Vending Theory for hours at a time were impressing him. I'm glad they put you with me, lad, this is a formative time for you. You'll learn the subtle ways, riding with me, things you won't necessarily learn from the other men. I can tell you're one to listen, and learn, pick up the wisdom where it was laid down, so to speak. Now look here, see that condensation under this machine? The condensation gutter is plugged up, see, the moisture ought to drip down and evaporate out of the drain-pan, but something's blocked the gutter and it's overflowed. Looks bad, water under a machine, looks leaky and unreliable. No one wants to put a dime in a leaky machine. We disassembled the cooler assembly and cleared out the gutter, George explaining the braindead–simple mechanism at length. The calm little voice in the back of my head that had gotten me through so much, hummed random tunes and meditations on patience, on rent money, on the relatively easy and weirdly egalitarian work environment. As my father had always said, sometimes mindless work is the best work. We reassembled the machine, filled its rails, took its swollen money box, and moved on.

You notice the pattern, young man?

Pattern in what, specifically?

Product, lad, product. What this part of the city wants is sweets. What it needs is sweets. We have our hands on the primitive psychological workings of the community, we feel the pulse and know what the heart is doing. Vending machines sell what people need, on the most basic level, what they find themselves wanting in the middle of the night, in the early morning hours, on their jog to work or in their darkest, loneliest moments, walking the street, seeking solace. What sells here is sugar, because that's what the people here need. The comfort of sweetness, a soft buffer between them and the harsh realities of the world. They aren't starving, they don't need calories, they won't eat a Cherry Surprise Puff just because that's all there is. They want comfort, a familiar favorite, conveniently to hand. Now down on the south side, it's cheaper stuff, and it all sells — they don't need variety, they just need something. Anything. Here, lad, have one of these muffins, I've got plenty at home.

I looked at the slightly crushed, blue-dotted thing. It seemed invested with unspoken needs now, but I took a bite anyway, wondering if it made a difference that I had been given it rather then bought it myself from a brightly lit machine. I wondered how many George really did have at home. It was a perk of the job, taking care of the damaged goods, though each one had to be logged and accounted for in the takings. Expired and damaged pastries could well be a staple of George's diet, I thought, though he was spry for a large man.

We did repairs on a cigarette machine, filled banks of brightly colored little boxes with capsules of cheap plastic toys, gum balls, bouncy rubber balls. George lectured on the economics of children, then on the health considerations of the wealthier citizens as the route wound through nicer parts of town. The machines were fewer, the contents more expensive, ‘Organic’, ‘Multi–grain’, and ‘Fair Trade’ began replacing words like ‘Delight’ and ‘Surprise’. George opined on the wisdom and lack thereof of the various suppliers whose product we moved. Machines our company owned and maintained, but whose contents were determined by mysterious deals between the suppliers, our company and the businesses and municipalities on whose property the machines did their business. It was all well above our pay grade, but George was sure if they would only listen to him, profits could only increase, communities only prosper.

We finished as the sun came up, my first night on the streets as an actual paid vending machine technician, albeit still an apprentice one and still bound to an experienced partner until they were sure they could trust me. As stop–gap make–do jobs went, it wasn't so bad, I'd take it over retail any day. It would pay the rent until I could find something better, or get back into school, or something. So long as it kept me in the city and out of a bus headed back to Mom and Dad's, it was golden.

You did a fine job, lad, I think you've got what it takes. Tomorrow we go downtown, and then, well, we'll see how you do. A part of me wanted to salute him, I felt bad for the cruelty of the impulse. Not that he would recognize the irony, but anyway, he was a decent guy; he didn’t deserve snark from me.

Thank you, George. I'll see you tomorrow.

The next night we cut through a strange cross-section of city life: soda machines, coffee machines, condoms and tampons. Despite myself, I thought about the George Philosophy of Vending Machines and considered what this community wanted and needed, at short notice in a hallway or bar bathroom.

Notice how the Big Boy Double X is nearly all sold out, while the Standard is practically full? Marketing, that is. They’re all the same size, but impressionable young men, well, you know. He didn't wink, but I felt one in the air in any case. I stood awkwardly, holding a box of fruit-flavored condoms up for him to load into the machine. It wasn't the first time I'd been in a public men's room, but never in one this busy. Again I wondered if George understood that I was female; the men who walked in the door seemed to spot it immediately despite the uniform overalls and hat. "Now the condoms have expiration dates, even if they do have an exceptional shelf life. Always